Dart Short-Block Assembly - Heart Transplant

Long before Snooki and her Go-rillas, the Jersey Shore was one of the places to be in the summertime. Beaches, bikinis, and the boardwalk dominated the thoughts of many a young Jersey boy, including yours truly.

There was something inherently cool about cruising the Jersey Shore in an '88 Monte Carlo SS. There amongst a sea of third-gen Camaros, Trans Ams, and TPI Vettes, my boys and I would spend Saturdays prowling Route 35 between Seaside and Point Pleasant Beach in my burgundy metallic Monte-T-tops off and Bon Jovi's "99 in the Shade" blaring on the radio. Chasing big-haired honeys was the perfect end to a day at the beach. Though largely stock, the car stood out from all those IROCs just enough to get us the attention four 19-year-olds craved.

The well-coiffed mullets, gold chains, and girls with big hair are now a distant memory, although I still have the gold chain (take the boy outta Jersey, can't take the Jersey outta the boy). The car, however, is still with me more than 150,000 miles of memories later, including the ever-memorable first date with my wife in '92 and bringing my newborn son home from the hospital in '98. Somewhere in there is the obligatory stash of old speeding tickets and one off-road drag racing incident in the infield of Talladega Superspeedway. I did win that race, although getting Alabama red clay off of framerails is quite a bit harder than one yankee from Jersey ever expected.

I drove the car hard, but I also babied her. While I had plenty of offers, I never considered selling it-not for a minute. Not even when I was driving home and the venerable 305 started making noises that resembled a baby playing in its mother's collection of pots and pans. I nursed the car back home and began to ponder the fate of my best friend of 23 years.

Since the oil and coolant were co-mingling, the decision was made to yank the 305 and ring up the boys at Dart Machinery to get one of their Special High Performance (SHP)short-block assemblies and top-end kits. We wanted to show you how easily you can more the double the horsepower and torque of a stock SS.

Now before I get much deeper into the Dart side of this build, I can hear the 305 faithful saying, "Why not just rebuild it or modify it?" To be frank, I (like a lot of guys) always thought the 305 was a perfect example of GM's '80s foolishness. Why on earth would they put that motor in a car made famous by the likes of Dale Earnhardt? Montes should have had a Tuned Port Injected 350. I believed that then and I still believe that to this day-although I will be the first to admit those 305 motors can make good power when properly rebuilt.

To ease the feelings of (while at the same time educating) the 305 faithful, the stock motor will become the subject of a rebuild/upgrade story later on. For now, it's time to head to Automotive Performance Engines in Auburndale, Florida, and catch up with owner Kevin Willis who is assembling a new heart for the SS known as Exit 98.

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The paint on our ’88 Monte Carlo SS may look factory fresh (sort of), but the motor is a whole different story.

1 All Chevy short-blocks from Dart are built around a high-quality SHP block and premium components, with plate-honed cylinder bores, internally balanced rotating assembly, flat-top pistons with full-floating pins, connecting rods with 3/8-inch cap screws, Hastings moly rings, Clevite bearings, and coated cam bearings. We chose the 400-cid assembly with a 4.125-inch bore and a 3.750-inch stroke with forged internals. It comes pre-assembled, is durable, and priced right, starting at $4,328.65.

2 Sticking with the Dart theme, we chose Dart’s top-end kit. These kits include fully assembled cylinder heads, stamped-steel valve covers, and intake manifold. Everything is matched to complement the cylinder heads, thereby taking the guess-work out of selecting various parts. The kit also includes intake gaskets, head gaskets, exhaust gaskets, spark plugs, and ARP head bolts. You can further customize your top-end kit by sticking with the iron heads or upgrading to one of two aluminum options: the Pro 1 aluminum cylinder heads for $263.78 or the CNC’d version for $1406.95. We opted for the $263 upgrade, which gives us all the advantages of aluminum without dropping four figures. Incidentally, our intake port volume is 180cc with 64cc combustion chamber volume. We wanted to maintain strong power across the rpm range for the street and these 180cc heads will provide that. Valve sizes are 2.02/1.60 (i/e).

3 Here’s a view of the internally balanced crank. Since this is an internally balanced rotating assembly, we’ll have to make sure the flywheel matches when it comes time to put in the trans—but that’s a subject for another story.

4 We gave Comp Cams’ new cam selection software the acid test in choosing a cam for this engine. Dubbed CamQuest, the software is run right off of a dedicated website, www.camquest.com, and couldn’t be easier to use. Just input your vehicle and engine info, and it spits out a recommendation. Camquest recommended we use an Xtreme Energy hydraulic roller with grind number XR282HR. Duration at .050-inch lift is 230 on intake and 236 on exhaust. We could have gone with a more aggressive cam, but driveability is a key attribute we’re looking for in this build … remember those cruise nights.

5 While we were ordering items from Comp, we also picked up a keyway adjustable billet timing set. The induction-hardened machined-steel billet gears give it bulletproof durability, and it features a 9 keyway crank sprocket for 2-degree incremental adjustability and 8-degree maximum advance/retard. Comp even pre-stretches and heat-treats the double roller timing chain and includes Torrington roller thrust bearing for reduced friction.

6 Here, Auto Performance Engine’s Kevin Willis is in the middle of degreeing the cam.

7 The top-end kit goes on. Dart’s kit includes head gaskets, which you can see here.

8 The pushrods also came from Comp and are 7.300 inches x 5/16 inch. Engineered from durable, one-piece, 0.080-inch-wall chromoly steel tubing, they are designed and heat-treated for extended durability and guide-plate compatibility. We loved the fact that the black-oxide finish contains easy-to-read, laser-etched part number and length—especially handy if you build your own motors.

10 ARP Fasteners offers a complete set of stainless steel bolts for this engine. While using this kit did give us an extra set of head bolts, it was still the perfect way to go when building any engine. Like the Dart short-block assembly and top-end kit, the ARP kit takes all the guesswork out of sourcing the right bolts for your application.

11 Moroso’s oil pan (PN 20196) has a built-in louvered windage tray and is perfect for this build. To keep the black gold flowing to the heart of our engine, we used Moroso’s high-volume pump/pickup combination (PN 22134), which comes pre-welded together.

12 Here Willis has installed the oil pan using a gasket from Cometic Gaskets.

13 The ATI Super damper gets installed.

14 Since this engine is going to be driven a lot, both on the street and at the track, APE owner Willis wanted to run a stud girdle (Comp PN 4001-4004). While not completely necessary, stud girdles do help valves hold their lash longer and drastically reduce flex in the valvetrain.

15 With the CFR Performance water pump and crank pulley already installed, the fuel pump is bolted on. We chose a 110-gph Holley mechanical fuel pump. Beautiful in its polished chrome simplicity, the Holley pump will provide plenty of oomph to get the gas to the carb.

16 The motor is ready for my favorite item on this build …

17 … a Performance Distributors Street/Strip DUI ignition with a clear cover. Now that’s the way we do it—Jersey-style, baby!

18 In discussing carb options for this motor, our good friends at Holley offered up two for a dyno session: an 850 with vacuum secondaries and a 950 double pumper.

19 While we were taking dyno time to do a carb comparo, we figured why not play around with some spacers too? We’ve got 2-inch open and tapered spacers from All Star Performance and 1-inch open and tapered spacers from Speedway Motors.

20 Willis used his dyno carb to set timing and get a baseline for the motor.

21 As you might guess, we played with jetting on both carbs to get the max out of them. The 850 ended up with 84 front, 88 rear, while the 950 got 84s all the way around. Since this was a brand-new engine, we intentionally jetted the carbs on the rich side. Better to foul a plug than burn a piston.

22 The initial dyno run is made without the benefit of a spacer of any size. It yielded 428 hp and 447 lb-ft torque. Tuning and spacers would yield substantially more power.

24 Even though the A/F ratios read where we wanted them, we pulled a plug to check the burn after the initial runs. A nice even coloration told us that everything was running like it should internally.

25 Here are the numbers from the carb comparison. As you can see, the 950 won out, but not by much. In actuality, either carb would work; however, the motor seemed to “like” the 950 better as Willis said. Not only did it sound better with the 950, but the A/F stayed much more consistent across the whole power band. So the decision was made to move on to the spacer test using the 950.

26 Like the carb comparison, the results from each spacer test yield differences of less than 10 hp and/or lb-ft either way. Spacers are, obviously, more of a tuning aid than a way to jack horsepower numbers. Even so, the test was fun and in one way surprising. We thought the 2-inch open spacer would give us the best results, but in fact it was the 1-inch open that won this contest.

27 With the 1-inch spacer declared the victor, we moved on to the final tune. A jet size of 84 all the way around kept the carb a bit on the fat side. For the final pull, we leaned the carb out by dropping to 82s all around. The results speak for themselves: max torque of 479.1 lb-ft and 458 horsepower. The A/F was still on target, so this is the combo we’ll keep from here on out.

28 Once we got the motor back to Super Chevy’s Snap-On Tech Center in Tampa, we set out dressing up its front end. CFR Performance’s Chevy Small-Block Complete Chrome Pulley, Bracket & Pump Set is specially designed for these engines and includes a chrome 100-amp 1-wire internal alternator, chrome-plated aluminum high-volume long water pump, a remanufactured, chrome-plated, Saginaw-style power steering pump, as well as all the pulleys and brackets to mount it. This was our first experience with a CFR Performance product and as they say in Jersey, “It fit like butta.” (Editor’s note: For those outside the Garden State, there’s no literal translation for this. It means it worked perfectly.)

29 With a set of Hooker Darksides headers mated to the 458-horse 400, Exit 98 should have plenty of motor to wake up the neighbors. Don’t you just love the MSD starter peeking out from behind them? Stay tuned for the next installment when we slide our new baby back between the framerails of our Monte, which you can see is anxiously awaiting that next step.

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